1 He is Awake

CHAPTER 1

HOME is where the hurt is, so, sanity must be the illness, right? Memory is mere suicide of one's mind. Captured by my past, my memories have me prisoner, remembrance is my murderer, too scared to let my thoughts out, locked down, forever. I've always be taught that minor minds cave, you'll need miners to uncover these tough, rock, taut thoughts. Whatever the weather whether I wither or whether I won't, these are the voyages of my dark diaries days; scrawl scrolls of my bawls when a tear comes to visit a page. Destiny is written within us all, each footstep is a word, each sentence is a mile and each lifetime is a book. No matter your outcome, it will be finished whichever wary way you write it.

I really must remember to jot that down before I forget.

A cold shudder of air blows in through the kitchen window, the decrepit floral curtains snap at my face. I took on my sister's chores tonight, cleaning the kitchen; she was having an off day, girly problems; cringe. Jessica, she was rarely in our world and a rarity within this world, she is a shy true beauty, pretty but petty. Her long black hair whips wild at the slightest of winds, which silhouettes her wonderful wistful face, with bushy sable eyebrows that stable her mush, you could clock her from a cosmos away.

When guys at school tried to introduce themselves to her, I would have to step in and induce an immediate conversation suspension, a no entry dude... beat it kiddo... never going to happen arsehole; and I would usually assemble these words followed by THE STARE at them.

Yeah, I was overprotective, barring that, could you imagine, what would happen to her if one of those dicks came knocking at the door for her and my Dad answered? Fuck, what if she came home one day and told him she was knocked up? He would snatch the life straight from her and that poor unborn kid, after that, he'd pick-up something sharp and go hunting for the dude. I'm a thirteen minutes' older big brother, I must be this way; it's in the rulebook of life. Someone needs to look out for her.

The elongated fingers of the branches from next doors tree scrape against the window; from this perspective, the random trees circling our house are nature's natural prison bars, in which I could never truly escape except within my mind, through my overactive imagination. When I am in my head anything mission impossible is oh-so possible, flying away after saving this world from the Martian threats. Wealth, where I can buy anything and conquer poverty in one violent swipe; or just dream of plain happiness; I must remember and reiterate that fiction is fake mixed with cheap hopes and deep slopes. Amongst all my anger, my fascinating persona is wrenching at my bad thoughts to surface as an evolved superior being among these weak mortal men, they all underestimate my true face.

I've been seeing and hearing things for a long while now, something big is coming, I think, I hope. Vile man, vile man, a spider in a span, capture, capture, eat up if you can. I am... I am.

Fuck, murmured voices erupt from the living room, which could only mean one thing, Dad was conscious. One more round; pull down your rubber gloves and pull up your boxing ones. I emerge a gigantic kitchen knife from the bottom of the murky water of the dish and froth-filled sink, the same kind killers cling to and orbit towards. As I stare into the blades bane reflection, the distorted image is almost alien as I watch the water trickle over my mirrors image, I think for a pure sleek slick period, murderer, it nearly whispers with a whack so ambitious where I wash dishes. I could lie to rest all our family's problems with this instrument of death, an arched arm and the wrongfully right intention, it could all be over in seconds, just like next-doors squawking kittens. The sound of metal as it grinds against their little rib bones. The gush of rummaged guts and ruptured entrails entail. The red carpet of blood sneaking closer and closer to my feet, should I dip my shoe in it and walk? A gloop on my fingertip suffices, swirling my name in cursive on the concrete until the red ink runs out.

This is my power, this is my drug of choice, this is what makes me a God, but daddy-dearest is bigger prey and I don't have the balls, as of yet, so I will stick to my chores and follow the flow of the good-boy law.

I flick the bubbles and excess water from my hands and walk brisk on eggshells and the half hammered-in nails which keeps the laminate underlay down, towards the kitchen doorframe.

I spy with my little eye; he sits upon his mighty throne in the middle of the living room, losing his reality towards the dysfunctional jester within the television. I was binge watching Dragonball Z, an anime cartoon with a spoonful of fighting courage and a bucket chocka of blood, my childhood delight wrapped-up in one program.

Look at him, his empty beer bottles that surround his chair only reflects his pillars of drunken wisdom, which he catapults over my sister and me when we don't listen to his every wordily worldly whim. We are prisoners within this hell-house and our father is our captor, abuse is our role-models form of love and we play the victims well; we both share his black belt in parenting.

I should kill him where he chugs beer and shoots-up, wrap this tea towel around his redneck until no breath leads to blue-face and death; I'm too cowardice and controlled for such a sadistic act.

"So, I can add skulk to the list of disappointments for my son, eh? You and your sister's jobs done yet, boy?" He rumbles the windows, walls and my soul when he grumbles.

An unnerving thought sprinkles over my skin to give me Goosebumps; I rub my upper arms, we sometimes go without heating for a few days, he uses most of the money for his habitual medical hobbies, but I take and steal some, so we can still eat. I take a step backwards as he reaches for his cigarettes, fear helps bring out your weakest of characteristics.

"Yes, father. Jess, wasn't feeling too well, so I did my jobs as well as hers. They're all almost done, so no need to worry. I'm nearly finished." My father, the unclean, holey wife-beater vest wearer and unholy let down as a human. This moronic man is a complete cliché of the neighborhoods concerns and the local curtain twitching gossips. They were all right, but they can only speculate about what is happening behind our closed doors. His outer persona was in check, he did at one-point look like someone we'd all notice on the street as an attractive man, but you and I both know, looks fade and most time in vainness you can make yourself more alive by lighting up your veins. He was a fucking wanning state, why hasn't he died yet? His face, his face... I don't like it.

"Worry? I ain't worried; I'm worried that you'd think I'd be worried." He takes in a puff of gasper. "My daughter wants to shun her chores and let her faggot brother take over, I'm fine with that. Go get me my after-morning beer, there's a good lad." I abide his sober groggy tone in this dire abode.

I toddle back in the kitchen; from the refrigerator, I take hold of the crisp cold beer, which lives next to the sour twinge of off milk. The non-knock of a headache tumbles around in the back of my head. Slave first; hurt can come later, Kyle. At butler's pace, I return to the scene of all my summing fears, within his presence, I hand him his beer and wait for an acknowledgement for some sort of approval. With a baleful look, he cracks open his beer with his rotting teeth and returns to his television. I scamper back to my cleaning terminal and dunk all my anger beneath the foggy depths of water.

The rap-rap-rapture of thunderous footsteps are captured vibrant within the floor staves behind me. Before I have chance to turn and switch my defense mechanism of petrified to maximum capacity, my long-bedraggled hair is yanked backwards.

"You little fucker, have you been helping yourself to my cigarettes? You better answer me boy, before I really lose my temper." Drunken sputters are uttered whilst waving a Red-Marble cigarette packet in my face.

"No Dad... I swear... You're hurting me... Dad, you're on my hair." I bow to his coercion once more with my snivels; I stand there eyeing the beast, waiting for my purpose as the prey to become plausible and apparent, should I curl up and get jumped and squashed or shall I hurl my legs and run?

Out of nowhere, with a wham to the side of my face, I see blackness for an endless second; those trusty wooden floorboards always help break my headfirst fall. Seconds escape my minutes. Shaking off the jaw jab and now with this alluring headache, this is making a meal of my innards, the pain throbs slow and drags from one side of my skull to the other. I manage to knuckle down on the dry week-old food I haven't yet swept and rise as I always do, as a weak man, but this time to the howls and feeze from Jessica, the only one I am not forced to take care of in this Hell-house. The blood spills from my lips edge to the ground, it meanders through the cracks and worn-down indents of time in the laminate flooring as a snake's sway before it strikes at you.

I stumble through the murmur of birds tweeting around my eyes; the walls hoist my curious fearful intents, hand by hand, disturbing cased thoughts made worse by a worse case thought. Where am I going with this derailed train-of-thought?

The dramatic yelps escalate to seen scenes of screams and pain. I peer around our shared bedroom-skirting jamb; our father has her pretty face clamped in his fingered tusks whilst his other free hand he freely flings slaps with fighting force.

"You're fucking hurting her motherfucker!" Drastic drama calls for callous words and a pointed stern finger. I run for Gods throat, his beer and drug driven mind steers in my direction with robotic panache, his unflinching eyes roll around in their sockets, probably brewing a mixture of sick torture to love on to me. If there is one thing on this planet I will do, it is to protect Jessica, with all my strength to this cause, not that I have much to dish-out.

A fist flies ferocious for my face; I kiss the ground once again. Why has no one heard this grotesque commotion? Either they don't know, or they just don't give a shit.

When I come around, the blurs of my sight slur back to the almost murderous élan mundane, I witness my sister being dragged backwards by her hair; our father has gone off on one again. He stops sudden in his twisted trail from whatever misery he had planned, this is going to be bad, he kneels over the princess, his knees pinning both her arms to our bedroom floor, squashing her muscles and bones.

"So, you want to smoke my cigarettes, huh? You're going to regret picking up my bad habits, you motherfucking bitch." The tinge upon his last words fetches an unfathomable sinister shiver up my spine. He reaches into his pocket and latches on to his secretive cigarette packet, lights one up, sucks in the stick then exhales his asphyxiating amusement in smoke-form upon Jessica's face.

"You will both learn not to touch my things..." A wink is chucked at me, and the cancer-stick is jabbed onto Jessie's collarbone. She vomits such a painful wail, I bolt my hand around my shoulder, a burly ache constricts over the exact area of her dotted-out burn.

I can see her scratching her fingernails across the floor, she hocks in a swift shocked scream for the simple silence of a sufferer.

The moral line is in eye limit for Dad. No one moves or utters a single slither of a word. Shush is now the scream within the night, which shrieks back around when you don't want it to.

With his apish limbs, he hurls open the basement door; I can almost see Jessica's lungs as she retches them up. She's hated that place ever since he dug it, now we know why he did. By her wrangled ankles, she's dragged, thump by thump, down the stairs they go, thud, thud, thud; he and the darkness have her now; my best friend has been served to her nightmare.

In and out of consciousness, minutes seem as seconds, I distort in and out of what is real and not. As I lay there, oozing blood, an idea hovers over me and jags into my mind. Hell would wash its hooves with me as an idea of such devilish proportions has a happy eruption within me, it's as if a white light had slapped my chops; but I shall put my secret scheme in the psycho-drawer of my mind and come back to the land of the semi-living, for now.

Kill, kill, kill, until every drop is spilt, it's his own fault, with every brick he built, put aside your guilt and kill, kill, kill. I could slash out my eyes to not witness anymore hurt; I do hear that if you lose one sense that your others heighten, if it ever does happen I pray for superpowers. Suicide, suicide, on my mind all the time, every time I close my eye I always dream of suicide, suicide.

I escalate my noggin' up, looking down over my feet. Where did the floor go? Where and at what point did the white clouds soak up fermenting unspoken feelings and piss-out shit upon this home? The weatherman must die. I comb over to the hallway, observing my Dad locking the basement door, swinging the keys around on his index finger, and then pocket them with a treed smile, which is systematically, symmetrically, strategically stretched out; this scares me through my chattering bones to my battered soul.

With his thumb aimed down the hall. "Get back in that fucking kitchen and finish those fucking dishes, if I hear another peep out of either of you again tonight, I am really going to go out of my way to lose the title of Father and protector. Now MOVE!" Okay, you win this battle, Dad, as you always do, this is the game and it's never going to be over until one of us wins.

I retract up quick, finger documenting cuts and bruises; I've had worse.

I walk white knuckling every morsel of my miserable memories, eyes twitching with seeps of seawater, don't close them, they will fall before him and he will know he has won obedience over you. I doddle with unnerved speed back to my terrible terminal trembling, I drive my hands under the cold water and finally make a fist, I'm a pussy. Tears hemorrhage to the foamy H2O.

Kyle, do your chores and go to bed for an early night. That's if you can't hear Jessie's willful waterworks work wonders on your warmth of thoughts. Yeah, I'm not sleeping tonight, am I?